BALTIMORE – Playing in traffic is a dangerous and taxing game for a pitcher and J.A. Happ did plenty of that on a frigid and damp 6 C night Monday at Camden Yards.
“I don’t enjoy pitching six stressful innings,” the Toronto Blue Jays left-hander said after leading the way in a 7-1 victory over the Baltimore Orioles that was tight until the end. “Things happen that way. A lot of the times not good things.”
That wasn’t the case this time. Happ was, by design, locking in on the power element of his game and throwing his four-seam fastball 62 times in 104 pitches, generating 15 of his 19 swinging strikes. As a result, he struck out nine batters over six innings of one-run ball, including the side in both the first and second innings after the first two batters reached.
After his two middling starts to open his season validated his game plan to simplify his approach and go after hitters a bit more, he needed to rely heavier on the old No. 1.
“Definitely, I wanted to be more aggressive and that’s a good way to do that for me,” explained Happ, who allowed five hits, one home run and three walks. “If I can start locating (the four-seamer), then everything else plays off of that. I felt more comfortable tonight executing with those over the two-seam.”
Happ averaged 93.7 mph on his four-seamers, topping out at 94.5, while mixing in 21 two-seamers and 12 sliders, getting two whiffs on the latter. He added a handful of token curves and changeups but when he’s effective with the fastball, it tends to play up the way it did against the Orioles.
“Sometimes if I lose a bit of that aggressiveness, then the life on the ball isn’t quite the same, it seems,” he said. “I’ve really got to compete and be aggressive, and sometimes the ball has a little bit extra life on it that way.”
Happ needed that extra zip to navigate through the traffic and not get squashed. The Orioles went an astonishing 0-for-10 with runners in scoring position, allowing Happ and relievers Danny Barnes and Ryan Tepera to make Steve Pearce’s two-run homer stand up until Josh Donaldson’s grand slam in the ninth provided some breathing room.
“It’s a sense of relief, especially playing here,” Donaldson said of having the cushion. “I have so many memories of these guys coming back and winning games against us late, so it was nice to score some runs at the end, give (Roberto) Osuna a day, get (John) Axford in there as well. That was a really tough game for both sides, there were a couple of situations where the game could have swung either way, and I’m proud of how our team really stayed in it, stayed in the fight and kept battling and executing and making plays.”
Here are some other Blue Jays talking points from Monday:
While the Blue Jays weren’t quite as wasteful, they did nothing with the bases loaded and one out in the second, and also came up empty with the bags full in the eighth. Aledmys Diaz was thrown out at home trying to tag on a medium depth Justin Smoak fly ball before dropping the hammer in the ninth. Curtis Granderson’s two-out bases loaded walk against lefty Nestor Cortes Jr., pushed the lead to 3-1 before Donaldson hammered an up and away four-seamer over the wall in centre. He was down 1-2 in the count when he delivered. “I hadn’t ever faced him, he’s a lefty, I figured he’d probably try to go soft on me early,” said Donaldson. “He pumped me two heaters in there, he has a shorter stride down the lane, shorter arm length so the first two got on me, I really wasn’t expecting it. When I got to two strikes, I was trying to find something I could hit.”
Randal Grichuk, mired in an 0-for-26 funk, didn’t start to clear his mind, as manager John Gibbons felt the right-fielder was pressing. But he entered for defence in the eighth and got an at-bat in the ninth, pummelling a low and away fastball off the wall in centre to end his slide. Up to that point, the 26-year-old had two hits, three walks and a sacrifice fly in 38 plate appearances and was staring up at an .059 batting average. “Anytime you square up a baseball it feels good,” he said, “but after the bad luck slash bad at-bats slash rough go lately, it felt good to get a knock.”
Hitting coach Brook Jacoby had been urging Grichuk to avoid the scoreboard and remember “that it’s not going to change overnight.” He wanted him to also continue “to stay in the strike zone, do the things he’s done in the past to be successful.” To that end, Grichuk’s chase rate is down three per cent from last year, and as his swing chart below demonstrates, he’s largely gone after strikes. However, his contact rate is down noticeably, to 62.5 per cent from 73.4 per cent, a number that should normalize as should his batting average on balls in play, which is currently 1-for-20 (homers don’t count since the ball isn’t in play). He also made a mechanical adjustment. “I stood up a little bit, I was more upright,” Grichuk explained. “I felt like I was a little too crouched and coming up on my swing which might have caused some of the high fly balls instead of getting more line drives.”
Kendrys Morales, making his first start of the season at first base, left the game in the second inning, suffering a strained right hamstring either during or after hitting a single. Yangervis Solarte replaced him on the basepaths, but the Blue Jays left the bases loaded in the frame, as Devon Travis struck out and Diaz lined out. Gibbons said at this point the team doesn’t believe the injury to be serious. “I don’t think so,” he said of a DL possibility before quipping: “It’s not going to slow him down or anything.”
Once Morales came out of the game, the Blue Jays moved Donaldson over to first base and had Solarte take over at third base, rather than having Solarte either play first or bringing in Pearce from right field and having Solarte move to the outfield. “We were talking in the dugout and Donaldson said, ‘I’ve played first base,’” said Gibbons. “So I was, ‘Go get ‘em.’ It’s not that complicated. Throw it up against the wall sometimes and hope it sticks.”
Donaldson has 41 games and 289 innings of experience at first base in his career, the vast majority of it coming in the Arizona Fall League. “I told (Gibbons) I felt it was better for Solarte to go to a position where he’s more comfortable at,” said the third baseman, who felt comfortable across the diamond save for his error in the second. “It didn’t look like it on the throw I made to J.A., but it is what it is.” Donaldson also ended up doing the splits stretching from the bag for a relay on an attempted double play in the eighth. “In high school, in order to be on the infield, we had to be able to do the splits. That was a long time ago,” he said with a grin. “I wasn’t trying to, it just kind of happened.”
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Pearce now has homers in three consecutive games, this one coming on a 3-0 middle-up fastball. “When you’re facing a guy like Bundy who has a lot of good stuff, that was a way we could maybe steal some runs from him by getting my pitch and maybe putting one out of the park,” he said of attacking 3-0.
Happ was helped in the fifth inning by an inning-ending 1-2-3 double play with the bases loaded, but needed a great Russell Martin snag off his poor relay home and an interference call for it to happen. Adam Jones was ruled to have run in the base path, preventing Martin from being to throw to first. Orioles manager Buck Showalter came out to complain, but the play is not reviewable. “Russ made an unbelievable play there saving the day after the bad throw there,” said Happ. “That was awesome.”
Prospect Anthony Alford, who suffered a right hamstring late in spring training, started a rehab assignment at single-A Dunedin on Monday, going 1-for-3 with a hit by pitch as the DH. Barring setbacks, he could rejoin the triple-A Buffalo Bisons later this week.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Bo Bichette continued their torrid starts to the season as double-A New Hampshire beat Trenton 11-1. Guerrero went deep for the second straight day and drove in six runs while Bichette collected three hits and scored three times.
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